


Five things Lan Fan hates about the apocalypse and one thing she doesn't.

by orphan_account



Series: Five glimpses into the mind and one into the heart. [4]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, F/F, Neither Mei or Lan Fan die don't worry., Prompt Fic, Xing, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-05
Updated: 2014-03-05
Packaged: 2018-01-14 15:44:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1272172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been two years and they're starting to feel the gravity on their shoulders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five things Lan Fan hates about the apocalypse and one thing she doesn't.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [firus_rising](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=firus_rising).



> Written for the prompt: "could you possibly do another may fan zombie AU but without the polyamory? thank you~" Since I kind of cheated on that submission for Femslash February, here, have some proper lady lovin'.
> 
> You can read this as taking place within the same zombie apocalypse AU [if you don't know what I'm talking about, go look up my other fic, "Absence (the cold never bothered her anyway)."] or not. The same rules in terms of how the zombies - referred to in-story as the damned - apply.
> 
> Lan Fan is a dmab mtf trans, which doesn't come up in the fic, but which I'm going to continually label my stories with that until people stop private-messaging me about whether a particular story includes that or not. If it doesn't, then I'll say so, but unless it's specifically requested of me, Lan Fan is trans. Fullstop. If you dislike that headcanon or would prefer not to read these fics, you're fine to close the page; I would never force you to my headcanons. But stop harassing me about it (note to readers on other websites: I haven't had any issues except on LP regarding this so this is not applicable to most of you, but for the purposes of consistency I'm placing this disclaimer up everywhere). Thanks home briskets.
> 
> Also, to that guest who keeps leaving kudos on my May Fan work, thank you kindly. I'll keep posting these on AO3 just for you (originally I was only posting my longer works but I started putting up the drabbles too, since I don't link people except those I know to my LP account).
> 
> Unbeta'd/unedited/etc. Enjoy and thank you for reading!

_I. Hunger._

Hunger is not the action of seeking out stores of provisions on occasion and filling filched knapsacks with rice and dried meat and fruit. Hunger is the coiled demon of void that curls in the bottom of her belly, swells her skin to the point of breaking, sinks its long phantom canines into her innards until she wakes up one morning with a dried crust of tears ringing her eyes.

Mei knows this hunger well, from her childhood in the Chang, and Lan Fan says little about the implications of a princess— _former_ princess—starving for her people to have another handful of rice to share. But she turns over the handling of supplies to a woman who can ration, to a woman who will not crack for any whimper that escapes from a former vassal curled inwards on herself in the middle of the road.

 

_II. Stench._

Of death, of decay, of rotting wood and smoking ash. Lan Fan comes to differentiate the smells: the sickly sweet odor of the softening of muscles, the sharply pungent plunge of broken bone and exposed marrow, the heady fruit-aged-cheese medley of a body whose skull has cracked and burst like overripe fruit.

She can identify how long a corpse has rotten and whether it died human or damned.

She has always been aware of the scent of passing. Shit and piss and blood. But never in her life has the stench become so ingrained that she rarely notices except for those fleshy bodies at the zenith, ruddy, bloated, unidentifiable. Identity and suffering transformed to harbingers of her eventual future, tossed into a bonfire to cleanse.

The meat and split skin are falling off the bones already.

 

_III. Thirst._

The skies, grey and dull. The clouds, closed-off and thin. The rain, broken, as if the gods have abandoned the earth.

They boil water from rivers and even so the warmth sloshes down their throats with the acrid aftertaste of death. Lan Fan drinks anyway, but Mei hesitates until her lips cry blood and her fingertips split at the desiccated seams.

Lan Fan survives with the perpetual throbbing of thirst pulsating just behind her brow.

 

_IV. Danger._

They travel east, but no matter how few hours of sleep that wrap about their exhausted bones, they cannot outrun the steady forward creep of the damned. Every town is a day-long affair of setting entire villages aflame and burning putrid bodies that plume in thick violet rings of smoke signals, pleas for help to unnamed gods. Every forest is a look-out, a sentry post, a quivering fear that the damned have learned to climb trees.

No other shelters exist as far as Mei and Lan Fan are concerned. And still within hours or rarely days—the latter an anomaly cause for celebration—they must stagger to their feet again. Trudge on.

The damned will not kill them.

Fatigue will.

 

_V. Burying the dead._

Before the apocalypse Lan Fan had always understood—had always _thought_ she understood—the power in her hands, automail and flesh; If she failed in protecting the young lord, if she failed in protecting _anyone_ , it would smear her honour into the dust such that she could never rise again.

She lived through Fuu, because Ling needed her more than she could ever need herself.

Yet when the thing that had been Ling mauled Xiao Mei in half with a single sickening crunch that separated head from torso with threads of muscle and vein still connecting flesh to flesh, when the thing that had been Ling groped for Mei’s then-slumbering form, Lan Fan had broken the soft layer of his skull a kunai nonetheless. And when the insides of his cranium had squelched into the grass at her feet not in greyed pink but in the heady fruit-aged-cheese medley of crumbling black, she could not find the tears behind the glazed dams of her eyes.

Mei had cried for her. Lan Fan could not arrange the sky burial of the Yao, but she cremated his ashes and scattered them to the wind in semblance of her people. At least Mei, standing behind her with her chest and stomach pressed to Lan Fan’s back as if somehow seeking to merge their bodies together—their _bodies_ —could steady her hand. Could grip her wrists as the flames ravaged away at Ling’s corpse.

She wanted to wait, until the darkness settled and the ash lay cool and grey as the clenched inner walls of her heart. But the damned damned her, and at least Mei, standing behind her, could break her vigil, could force her away from the fire, could push her to _live_ without her charge, in her final failure to Ling.

Now she has learned how failure tastes: cowardice, self-loathing, regret, acceptance, _survival_.

And a layer of ash forever ingrained to her tongue.

 

_0\. Mei._

She smiles and she laughs and she cries and she’s human, perfectly human, and she’s _Lan Fan’s_ and no one can ever have her.

Waiting in the shadows of the Emperor’s throne, Lan Fan had observed Mei from a distance, rules and laws and expectations and duties and responsibilities erecting barriers she could not scale. But here society has shattered under its own gravity.

Here she lies beneath the silver pepper of stars; here she feels the tickle of morning dew on the damp grass caressing her skin; here she links hands with Mei, and the universe does not crash around her so much as buoy her with warmed skin and quickened pulse.

“Mei?” whispers Lan Fan.

Mei blinks drowsily. “I love you,” she mumbles, half-asleep, head curling inwards towards Lan Fan.

“Sorry. I know it’s my shift.” Lan Fan closes the slight gaps between chests and knees and shoulders, Mei’s face a welcome warm weight on her neck. “I love you too.”

Mei kisses her throat. “We’ll live.” In her voice the words are flat truth, the gospel of the gods, and Lan Fan wants to believe her.

She finds, somehow, that she does.


End file.
